In spite of because of
by coldneedles
Summary: “They are trying to act like normal. But Bobby isn’t normal.” Between X2 and the Last Stand Bobby tries to make it work with his family and thinks about John and tolerance. Oneshot, with slight Bobby/John


**In spite of /because of **

**Author:** Coldneedles.  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairing: **slight Bobby/John

**Words:** 1,380  
**Summary:** "They are trying to act like normal. But Bobby isn't normal." Between X2 and the Last Stand Bobby tries to make it work with his family and thinks about John and tolerance.

**Disclaimer**: Not mine, don't own.

* * *

"_Tolerate:_

_1. allow the existence or occurrence of (something that one dislikes or disagrees with) without interference._

_2. endure (someone or something unpleasant) with forbearance."_

_- Concise Oxford Dictionary _

* * *

He goes back home for Christmas.

Ronnie won't even talk to him. He sits in his room sulking, while Bobby and his parents make awkward conversation about the weather. His dad makes a big show of carving the turkey and his mom fusses about how much he's eating. He talks about school with them; timetables, grades, things they can understand, glossing over jets, uniforms, battles and the fucking mess the world is in.

The knives clink against their plates and the silence. Clink. Clink. Clink. Bobby prays for someone to say something soon. Finally his mom gets up, brushing dark hair off her face.

"You're a freak. I wish you'd never been born," she says.

Bobby blinks.

Or maybe not.

"Shall we do presents now?" she really says.

Bobby's dad thinks he should be an accountant. He buys Bobby a scientific calculator as a present.

"It does fractions," he says.

"Great," Bobby lies.

They are trying to act like normal. But Bobby isn't normal.

He goes into the kitchen to help with the washing up and he runs his shaking hands under the tap. The water turns to ice, a little translucent arc over the sink. His mom's eyes are wide with horror; she sinks back against the fridge. Her mouth is formed in a silent scream.

This is the part they don't want.

Bobby bolts out the door, slams it shut, stands leaning against the wall of the house, breathing out cold gusts into the air. He wishes he had one of John's lighter's and some cigarettes. John used to smoke when he was anxious and didn't know what to do with his hands. Sometimes Bobby wakes up and he swears he can hear John's lighter click, but the bed besides him is empty and there is frost on his eyelashes again.

John could blow smoke rings. Bobby always got the acrid smoke caught in his throat and John would snicker and say "Very cool, Iceman" and Bobby would punch him in the arm.

But now he's standing alone on a dim Christmas afternoon, staring into the glowing windows of the other houses, houses that are probably full of happy, cosy families without a freak for a son and John's strained voice is whispering in his ear that he hates the lot of them and that he doesn't need them.

John was never a very good liar when he was trying to lie to himself.

Bobby loves them, so he steps back inside. The dishes are still in the sink, the ice still hung over it. The lights have been switched on and they are glinting off the shiny ice in all sorts of colours, making a frozen rainbow. In spite of himself, he grins. They might think it's freakish, but it's part of him and sometimes (this is John's voice) it's fucking beautiful.

He runs the hot water and the ice starts to melt. He switches off the light. The kitchen has the look of a scene hastily abandoned, but is pleasingly banal and domestic. It doesn't look like monster would live here. He tiptoes into the living room.

The lamps glow. The fairy lights on the tree twinkle. His mom is knitting; his dad is hidden under the pages of the Wall Street Journal. They have not seen him yet.

Bobby stands still as a snowman, trying not to disturb anything.

They still love him, they assure him, in spite of his mutation.

_In spite of_ being the operative part.

Bobby knows that he and his power can't be separated; his mutation is built into the very helix of his DNA and lately he's begun to use it more and more, sometimes without thinking. He'll be talking, and unconsciously he'll be sending little pieces of frost over the table, he's so tense and anxious for their approval. His parents will look on in horror and he'll know this is the part of him they don't want.

They _tolerate_, they ignore, they turn a blind eye, but never will they accept or embrace it or, by extension, him.

John always hated the concept of tolerance. He said it made mutants sound like dirt under human's shoes, like something to be put up with if it behaved itself. "There's no way I'll be fucking grateful for someone's tolerance of my existence," he was always saying.

* * *

Tolerance was never one of John's finer points. In a Biology lesson they were shown a picture of the X gene, the mutation. John stared at it in fascination, tracing his fingers over the spiral strands of DNA.

"Make something for me, out of ice," he said once they were back in their room.

Bobby opened his palm and started to shape the water vapour in the air. He made a rose. For once John didn't roll his eyes about Bobby being such a sap.

"You realise that we're evolution in action, don't you? In a hundred a years humans might have died off."

"That's a horrible thought," Bobby said idly, watching the rose melt in his hand. John traced his hand over Bobby's skin in a familiar pattern.

"No, it isn't. I'd be glad to see the back of them. It'd be like cutting a cancer out of a body, snapping a dead leaf off a branch. Evolutionary dead wood. It's survival of the fittest." He clicked his lighter harshly.

Survival of the fittest, in hindsight, seemed to naturally appeal to John. It gave him a destiny, gave him something to hang onto when nightmares tossed him back to near miss after near miss, assured him that it wasn't merely chance that he had made it, that he had survived because he was better, stronger, the master race. It told him that it couldn't have happened any other way. Don't look back at those dank children's homes, those twisted streets and nameless men, those parents who have never been your family.

"You talk about them like they're not people."

"I'll play nice with humans if they consider me a person, but till then-" John mimed blowing something up with his lighter and laughed.

"Violence, killing people isn't going to solve anything-"

"Ooh little Bobbykins has been listening to Professor Xavier and his sixties throw back philosophy," John mocked. "Newsflash Iceman, it doesn't work in the real world. You've got to get them before they get you.

He smirked, clicked his lighter again, and stood in the doorway.

"Of course you, with your nice mommy and daddy who think Bobby is off at a prep school, don't understand and you never will until it's too late."

The door slammed shut and John left.

* * *

In the end John left entirely. He went with the Brotherhood. They wanted him because of his mutation. They told him that he was a God amongst insects. He became Pyro, leaving the boy who cried at night and crawled into Bobby's bed like a snake sheds a skin. He might not have even looked back.

Bobby was too stupid then to realise that no one had ever made John feel special before.

Especially not Bobby, who had a few brief fumbles with him, but never touched anything but skin, never cared enough, who ditched him for Marie and gave her an ice rose instead and held her gloved hand while John glowered and pretended he didn't care.

When Bobby is honest with himself, he doesn't think he's as nice as most people think. He's cold. He splits his life down into little compartments and hopes they won't meet, thinks he can thrash under the sheets with John and then show Marie off to the world, keeping fabric between them all the time like an advert for American wholesomeness.

It feels like he has split himself apart.

The only thing he knows that he doesn't want to be loved in spite of it, with the mutation the skeleton in the family closet, or because of it, walking around thinking he's a god just because of some chromosomal accident.

He wants to be Bobby Drake, mutant, normal and extraordinary at the same time.


End file.
